


Tribal Elder: A Camera Eye Sidestory

by puss_nd_boots



Series: The Camera Eye [92]
Category: D (Band), X JAPAN
Genre: Alternate Universe - Porn, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 11:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14111673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puss_nd_boots/pseuds/puss_nd_boots
Summary: Ruiza has been dragged into a mainstream media scandal, and it has him down. Fortunately, he runs across an industry veteran who gives him sage advice – and who just may be hiding a big secret . . .





	Tribal Elder: A Camera Eye Sidestory

**Author's Note:**

> X Japan are property of Warner Music Japan, DIAURA are property of Ains, D are property of God Child Records, I own the story only. Written for the vkyaoi March challenge, The Test of Time, which involves using time as a theme and a secondary challenge of using elder VK statesmen in the plot. Yoshiki’s description of the beginning of the Japanese gay porn industry here is pure artistic license and is not intended to represent how it really happened. (And, yes, this is a very rare fic from me with no NC-17 content, but the story didn’t warrant it).

Ruiza liked to think that, until now, his life had been fairly free of the kind of scandals and troubles that had plagued other people within the industry. He had never been arrested for anything, he had never had any bad run-ins with the industry media, he didn’t have any running feuds with other performers.

That, of course, all came to a screeching halt when he got dragged into the Arashi mess.

He had never intended to be deeply involved in anything scandalous, of course. He was just trying to be a friend and mentor to a rent boy turned porn star who deserved better in life. And then, of course, said rent boy had to get romantically involved with a politician, and there was hush money involved, and then a whistle-blower who decided it would be a good thing to ruin the politician’s reputation . . .

And before he knew it, Ruiza’s phone seemed to be setting off one endless, constant ringtone, and it wasn’t the kind of calls he usually liked to receive. Suddenly, he was being asked a billion times a day by prying press about his old friend, and their relationship, and whether there were any three-way encounters with the politician in question . . .

Until it got to the point where he felt like he just needed to get away for an afternoon. He left his phone back at his apartment – yes, he knew it was risky, but he figured if he got into trouble, everyone around him would have a phone they could lend him. He was in the middle of Tokyo, after all. Not like everyone else in the city wasn’t armed with at least one phone.

Several subway stops later, he was walking slowly through a park that was far enough away from the offices of all the major porn industry companies that the press wouldn’t be haunting it. Unlike, of course, the PSC offices, which had become something of a camp-out site for the media as of late.

He breathed in the fresh, clean air as he started down a path in a grove of cherry trees. The first buds of the sakura were starting to form. Normally, he’d consider this a good thing – a welcome sign of the approach of spring, the end of winter. Right now, he couldn’t give a damn. The only thing he wanted to end, right now, was the Arashi scandal.

All I was trying to do was be a good friend, he thought. All I wanted to do was mentor him, give him advice, steer him on the right path . . .

And instead, Arashi had stumbled down a path that brought disaster not only to himself, but to people around him. He just wondered what the staff of Hard Candy thought of this mess. Not that it didn’t give him a small measure of satisfaction to think of them scrambling around, frantically trying to contain the damage. He hadn’t exactly left them on the friendliest of terms.

He sat down on a bench, leaning back, stretching out his neck and shoulders – damn, he was tense everywhere. Maybe he needed a massage. Maybe he just needed a stiff drink – or several. Maybe . . .

“Excuse me,” a voice said above him. “You’re Ruiza, aren’t you?”

He nearly jumped a mile in the air. Oh, shit, he thought. Oh, shit, even here . . .

“I don’t have any comment about the Arashi situation!” he snapped.

“I wasn’t going to ask you about it,” said the other man as he sat next to him. “I was just going to congratulate you on your work in Blond from Beyond. That was true charisma – the type we haven’t seen in the industry in years.”

Ruiza blinked. Holy crap – someone was asking him about his career? When was the last time that happened? He felt like it had been eons since someone had actually considered him to be, you know, a PERFORMER.

“Um . . . thank you,” he said. “Sorry, you caught me a bit off-guard.” There was something familiar about this stranger who was wearing a face mask and baseball cap. He knew he’d seen those eyes before, heard that voice . . .

“I catch a lot of people off-guard,” he said. “Especially people in the industry.”

The newcomer pulled off his hat and mask, and Ruiza gasped. No wonder he looked familiar. He was one of the founding fathers of the contemporary gay porn industry. Actor, writer, director, producer, studio head . . hell, there were few positions in the industry he HADN’T held.

“Yoshiki?” Ruiza said. “It’s really you?”

“I should hope so,” the other man said. “That’s who I was when I woke up this morning.”

“What . . . I mean, why . . .”

“What am I doing here?” Yoshiki said. “You might say this park is kind of a retreat for me. It’s been that way for years. You live your life in constant chaos like I have, you need to have an oasis to come to every once in awhile.” He looked over at Ruiza. “And I could ask you the same question, you know. This isn’t a place where industry types come to hang out.”

“No, usually we’re at clubs, Starbucks or ramen joints,” Ruiza replied. “But . . . I needed to get away from all of them. I needed to get away from everything, really.”

“Because of the scandal, right?” Yoshiki said. “You were involved with this Arashi, somehow?”

Ruiza nodded. “He was a friend. All I was trying to be was a friend to him. I barely even spoke to Okuno – that politician who paid him the hush money – but somehow, everyone thinks that I was having orgies with him and Arashi. That’s the last thing in the world I’d do.”

“I don’t blame you,” Yoshiki said. “He seems like a very unpleasant fellow, doesn’t he?”

“I really, really wanted Arashi to get out of that mess,” he said. “I almost wish I had a time machine, so I could go back and warn his younger self to stay the hell away from Okuno.”

“A time machine?” Yoshiki sounded amused. “We all would like to have one of those, wouldn’t we? Everyone talks about having a time machine, and what they would do differently.”

“It’s a hypothetical time machine,” Ruiza said.

“To stop a hypothetical porn star from having an affair with a hypothetical politician?” said Yoshiki. “It’s pointless making those kinds of wishes, you know. Time moves in one direction, and one only. You find that out when you get to be in the industry as long as I have.”

“Just how long is that, anyway?” Ruiza said. “You were in it way back when, weren’t you? Before there really was any kind of a gay porn industry?”

“Oh, yes,” Yoshiki said. “The so-called good old days. Which really weren’t that good. It was a constant uphill struggle, trying to get recognition for all-male films. You know who made the first few movies? It was a small group of bisexuals working in the straight porn industry. They kept trying to convince their bosses that there was a potential market for male-male content, but the bosses didn’t want to hear about it. So, they borrowed money from everyone they knew and produced a film themselves as indies. When it made money, the bosses took notice.”

“And that’s when you got involved?” Ruiza said.

“Oh, yes,” Yoshiki said. “I knew one of the guys who was involved in that first film. I was a starving actor at the time – taking any part that came along in mainstream films and TV. I figured I’d do one film for them. And, well, that led to me doing more, and more, and eventually, I formed my own production company.”

“That was XXX Japan, wasn’t it?” Ruiza said.

“Indeed, it was,” said Yoshiki. “The industry really was a different beast back then. It was a lot wilder. A performer dating a politician? It wouldn’t have even raised eyebrows in those days – it was par for the course. Same thing with rent boys being actors. We raised money any way we could for our productions – and if it meant the whole cast and crew of a film becoming rent boys to a bunch of rich and powerful men for the evening, so be it. There were wild parties in public places – I remember a few of them ending in orgies, right in the middle of bars.”

Ruiza shuddered. “That’s not exactly what’s going on right now,” he said. “It’s a lot . . . calmer.”

“Yes,” Yoshiki said. “Calmer, more sedate. Almost gentlemanly. Well, except for the people at Heavy Hitter. They’re about as un-gentlemanly as you can get. But for the most part? It’s not nearly as interesting or exciting as it once was, because they lost one very important thing along the way.”

“Which is?” Ruiza said.

“Passion. Yes, that’s a strange thing to be saying about people who make sex films. But they’ve completely lost any passion. We went out on a limb and made the films we did because we believed in them. We thought the world deserved to have what we were willing to bring to it. We fought for respectability, for recognition, because we thought gay porn was an important part of the industry, no matter what the money men said. And we kept on fighting – first for our own studios, then for our own division of the Japan Adult Video Association. Do you know that there were no awards for male-male performers for years? The mainstream awards would give out one trophy for Best All-Male Production, that was it.”

“There’s still passion in the industry,” Ruiza said. “I see it all the time, now that I’m working for PSC.”

“PSC is the exception rather than the rule,” Yoshiki said. “Uruha still believes that the product can be constantly improved. Most of them? They’ve gotten complacent. They just churn out product like an assembly line. They don’t think any of it is worth fighting for – because they’ve always had it. In a way, they’re – dare I say it? – spoiled brats.”

“I don’t know about spoiled, but some of the people at Hard Candy are definitely brats,” Ruiza said. “I have no regrets about leaving them.”

“Then you have no need for a time machine, do you?” Yoshiki said. “Time machines are for people with regrets. They’re the ones who want to go backwards in time and erase the past.”

“It’s not leaving Hard Candy I have regrets over,” Ruiza said. “It’s Arashi. I wish I’d done things differently when it came to him.”

“And why is that?” Yoshiki said. “Because he got himself into trouble by being involved with some horrid politician? Who’s to say that wouldn’t have happened even if you’d said something different to him?”

“Well . . .” Ruiza paused. “I . . . I don’t really know.”

“You don’t, and you can’t,” Yoshiki said. “And therefore, you shouldn’t have any regrets. You did what you thought you could do as his friend, right?”

Ruiza nodded. “But I wonder sometimes if it was enough.”

“Of course it was,” Yoshiki said. “You put everything you had into being his friend, right? You can’t be expected to do anything else. The fact that he didn’t take your advice? That’s on him, not on you. You just need to let go of the regret and guilt.”

“Easier said than done,” Ruiza said. “Especially when the press won’t leave me alone.”

“The hell with them,” Yoshiki said. “They’ll just buzz around this like flies until the next scandal comes along. When it’s over, they won’t even remember the name Arashi.”

“But will the people who matter remember me?” Ruiza said. “Or am I going to be considered damaged goods in the industry because of this?”

Yoshiki shook his head. “We’re ALL damaged goods, my dear,” he said. “At least as far as the outside world is concerned.” He paused. “This isn’t just about you, though, is it? You’re thinking of someone else being hurt by all this.”

“How could you tell?” Ruiza said.

“I have eyes and ears,” Yoshiki said. “I may not be in the performing side of the industry anymore, but I still have my production company – plus, shall we say, a few side interests. People tell me things. A LOT of things. And I’ve heard plenty about your partnership with the young man known as Tatsuya – onscreen and off.”

“He means a lot to me,” Ruiza said, quietly. “More than anyone I’ve ever known in this business. I don’t want anything at all damaging our relationship. And the idea of throwing him into this media circus . . .” He looked down. “That’s what I regret most of all.”

“You had no idea you were going to meet him when you tried to help Arashi,” Yoshiki said. “Remember how I said that time flows in one direction, forward? We have no idea how one thing is going to lead to another, how one thing that happens in our lives is going to affect our future. And you don’t know what is happening to you now is going to affect the person you are five years from now.”

“What has that got to do with Tatsuya?” Ruiza said.

“Maybe going through this is going to make your relationship stronger,” Yoshiki said. “Maybe it is going to strengthen your bonds. Sometimes, the couples who have survived the most trials together are the ones that last the longest.”

Ruiza thought it over, quietly. Then, he said, “You’re speaking from experience, aren’t you?” 

“Long experience,” Yoshiki said. “My Sugizo and I have been together for more than three decades.”

Ruiza looked shocked. “That long? But . . . but that’s almost as long as you’ve been in the industry.”

“Indeed,” Yoshiki said. “We met not long after the industry took off. We were with different companies then – but that didn’t stop us from bonding. It started out with hanging out at industry events, and then going out drinking together, and then crossing over to each other’s companies so we could be co-stars. By the time I formed XXX Japan, he’d become the rock in my life – and he was there for me during an awful lot of shit. Industry politics at their worst. My company nearly being taken over at least twice. And . . .” He paused. “And the death of my best friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Ruiza said. He most definitely had heard of the incident. Hide had been the biggest star of the early days of the gay porn industry, singlehandedly putting XXX Japan on the map. He’d been the first performer to win a JAVA Male Award for Best Actor, the first to gain attention from the then-straight-porn-centered industry press. He’d been invited to do cameos in straight porn videos, and even in a couple of mainstream productions.

And then, suddenly, he was dead under mysterious circumstances, commonly thought to be a suicide – though many people, including Yoshiki himself, claimed to this day it was an accident.

“It was the darkest time of my life,” Yoshiki said. “I very nearly quit the industry. I didn’t know how I was going to go in every day and go through the motions of producing videos. It all seemed so meaningless after Hide was gone. But . . . Sugizo was there for me. He picked up my pieces and put me back together again – and I moved on. And once we went through that, I knew that I could face anything – as long as I was with him.”

He looked over at Ruiza. “I just hope you never, ever have to face a tragedy like that. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone – especially not somebody as nice as you.”

“I’m just glad you had someone to get through it with,” Ruiza said, quietly.

“You know, it really doesn’t seem like three decades that he and I have been together,” Yoshiki said, wistfully. “Maybe it’s because you don’t notice the passage of time so much when you’re in a happy and stable relationship. When you have someone that you can depend on, it makes riding the flow of time that much easier.”

Ruiza was quiet for a long moment. Maybe I’ve been overthinking this whole thing, he thought. Maybe I should spend a little less time worrying about this whole Arashi thing, and how it’s going to affect my relationship with Tatsuya . . . and a little more time just being thankful that he’s in my life.

Maybe, he thought, it’s karma, or destiny, that he came into my life when he did. Could it be that he was meant to be there for me at this time, to get me through this like Sugizo got Yoshiki through Hide’s death?

“Thanks,” he told the older man. “I’m going to think about what you said. In fact. . . I’ve got a lot to think about.” He stood up and bowed. “Will I see you at the JAVAS?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Yoshiki said. “I don’t really do those kind of industry gatherings anymore. I like to keep my influence behind the scenes, so to speak.”

“Fair enough. Thank you so much again – you’ve really been very helpful.” He bowed again. “Good day,” he said, before starting back off down the path he’d been walking before.

Ruiza took a deep breath as he walked. He felt, well, rejuvenated. Like a weight had been lifted from him. Talking with Yoshiki had given him some much-needed perspective. Getting advice from your elders seemed like a cliché sometimes, but . . . in this case, it was valid. And very much needed.

Maybe, he thought, if I’m lucky, my relationship will stand the test of time like his did. And if that happens, every bit of this Arashi thing would have been worth it.

* * *

Yoshiki sat quietly on the bench after Ruiza had left. He was quite glad to have helped the boy. He’d watched him come up through the industry over the years, and he’d achieved much-deserved success. Ruiza was one of the good ones – someone with honesty, integrity, and a genuine love for what he was doing.

Which was one reason he was glad the boy had landed with Uruha. Of course, he’d had a hand in that happening – just like he’d had a hand in so many other things that had happened.

He glanced around to make sure nobody was looking, and then he pulled out his phone and opened his “secret” Twitter account – the one he used only when nobody involved in the industry was around. Of course, he also had an equally secret blog – and even a second cell phone used for texting people directly.

It was, so to speak, his hobby, now that his “official” level of activity in the industry was much lower than it had been in the past. Who would ever think that one of the founding fathers of the industry would currently be amusing himself as the ultimate ear-to-the-ground blogger, conducting interviews with people over LINE and reporting on-the-record industry news? He was the last person in the world anyone would suspect.

Of course, the blog and Twitter were only half of what he was currently doing. He could, after all, only use “releasable” information in there – the on-the-record stuff the companies wanted him to report, with a few “blind item” no-names-used bits of gossip here and there.

The other half . . . well, that was where the REAL fun came in.

Being an elder statesman of the industry had its advantages. Everyone trusted him. They told him things – secret plans, clandestine hirings and firings. And, of course, they thought the intel would never leave that room.

Meanwhile, he was putting that intel to constructive use. As in, quietly delivering it to people he thought deserved to know it – the few people in the adult video industry who displayed honesty, integrity, and a desire to keep producing quality product while treating performers with respect. In short, the one thing that was missing from most of the companies – true passion.

Chief among them, of course, was the person he was messaging now, from his “secret” phone.

“Uruha,” he typed, “you’d better treat Ruiza with some TLC. He’s pretty rattled by the Arashi mess, and if I know Heavy Hitter, they’re going to exploit this whole thing on the red carpet at the JAVAS.”

“Don’t worry,” Uruha typed back. “I’m aware of everything. Having a debriefing of all talent/staff before JAVAS.”

“Good,” Yoshiki typed. “Your crew doesn’t deserve anything that night but a pile of awards. Especially Ruiza. Tipping you off that he was thinking of going indie was the best thing I did last year, I think.”

“You’ve done a lot, ever since I’ve been at this company,” Uruha replied. “Thanks, Sparxxx. I really don’t know if I could do it without you sometimes.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he replied. “Always.”

He put the secret phone away and just relaxed for a moment. Yes, being an elder statesman did have its advantages. He’d seen the past of the industry, and now, from the shadows, he was helping direct its future.

He couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next.


End file.
